Advertise
Researchers involved in the WORLD project — a collaborative initiative funded by the European Union's Horizon research and innovation program — have published findings describing a novel green chemistry process for converting used cooking oils (UCO) into high-value bio-based products and sustainable solvents.
The process, developed by a consortium of European universities and chemical companies, uses advanced catalytic techniques to transform UCO — which would otherwise be disposed of as waste or used as low-value animal feed — into a range of commercially valuable products including bio-lubricants, biosolvents, and precursors for bio-based plastics.
A key innovation of the process is its ability to operate at relatively low temperatures and pressures compared to conventional industrial refining, significantly reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with the transformation. The researchers estimated that the process achieves greenhouse gas emission reductions of over 70% compared to the production of equivalent petroleum-derived products.
The project consortium is working with several European industrial partners to scale the process from laboratory to pilot plant scale, with a view to achieving commercial production within the next three to five years. The technology has attracted significant interest from the oils and fats industry as a potential new high-value outlet for UCO feedstocks.
The WORLD project represents one of several EU-funded initiatives aimed at advancing the circular bioeconomy by developing new value chains for agricultural and food processing waste streams, with the oils and fats sector identified as a particularly promising area given the large volumes of UCO generated annually across Europe.
